Tomato Rhapsody Read online

  Certain her stepfather was already out for the day—she had heard him leave at the crack of dawn—she knocked softly on the door. A groan issued from inside the room, a groan being the only sound her mother could muster.

  “Buongiorno, Mama,” Mari said with what she hoped was a believable cheerfulness as she entered and approached her mother’s bedside. Mari’s mother looked at her daughter and with the half of her face that could still manage, she smiled. Mari set down the buckets of water, the washcloth and the bar of olive oil soap. She stepped to the window and drew back the curtains, spilling the room with morning sunlight. The room had two beds set a good eight feet apart. Her mother and stepfather did not sleep together. In fact, most often, he slept on a feather-mat in his study. Mari pulled over a chair for her mother to brace herself, then bent down and, with a heave, lifted her mother upright and seated at the edge of her bed.

  Mari tried her best not to make a face, but her mother was not so broken that she could not perceive the tiny flutter of revulsion that rippled her daughter’s countenance. The smell was that bad.

  Now Mari smiled and brightened her eyes, doing everything she could to protect the dignity of her mother. “Did La Regina have a good sleep?” Mari asked playfully. She always called her mother The Queen before she bathed her. It was what Mari’s father had called his wife, La Regina, and Mari La Principessa.

  Mari’s mother pressed her good right arm into the mattress as her daughter supported and pulled from under her mother’s lame left arm. Working together, La Regina was brought to her feet. In a practiced motion, Mari smoothly slid the chair closer so her mother could brace herself upon its sturdy back. Subtly, Mari stepped to her mother’s side to block her view in case she turned her neck to see what Mari caught in the corner of her eye and what she’d come to realize over the last several months to be something of a doleful morning certainty. Once again, her mother’s cream-colored sleeping gown was stained.

  The breakdown of her mother’s body began acutely, some ten years ago, when Mari was just nine years old, three weeks after the death of her father. Her mother, overwhelmed with grief since her husband’s undoing, had barely brought a crumb of food or a drop of water to her lips. Her misery, however, was not enough to keep the nasty old padre from informing her that if she did not find a new husband within one hundred and twenty days, the farm, the mill—all of it—would be confiscated by the church, for your own protection, of course. In a fit of anguish, Mari’s mother wandered off into the olive orchard to be among the trees her husband had tended for nearly all his life. It was an unusually warm day for early October and, by the late afternoon, Mari’s mother collapsed to the ground, burnt, exhausted and severely dehydrated from a full day in the sun. When she regained consciousness, some two weeks later, nothing about her was the same.

  Apoplexia: struck down with violence, was how Hippocrates first defined it. And the violence had struck Mari’s mother with a heartless ferocity. The whole left side of her face wilted, like a candle left out in the sun. Her left arm hung, near-useless, and her left leg had but a fraction of its former vitality, encumbering her with a dramatic limp. She could walk, yes, but her gait was slow and plodding, and if there was any distance to cover, she required a cane in her right hand and a strong body on her left. Her speech and tongue too seemed to have lost their way. But saddest to Mari was the state of her mother’s will, seemingly more damaged and depressed than any part of her body. In the months and years that followed, the limp abated slightly, her eye strengthened to open a fraction wider and her left arm grew just strong enough to hold a broom or help out a bit on market day. Her spirit, however, never recovered. Neither did her tongue or speech, and Mari knew why. What retarded her mother’s recuperation was not solely the misfortune of her past, but the reality of her present. One day shy of the four-month anniversary of Mari’s father’s death, her mother remarried, to a man so rotten and heinous that Mari imagined her mother wished she were blind and deaf too. God knows, Mari often wished she were.

  Quickly, Mari now knelt down and gathered up the bottom of her mother’s gown. “Ay!” Mari joked as she rose up and lifted the soiled garment off her mother’s body and over her head and then tossed it toward the door. Mari knelt back down, wet the bar of soap, dunked the washcloth into the bucket, then worked the one against the other to create a lather—the soap’s smell of bay laurel thankfully scenting the air. Her gaze traveled from her mother’s bare, puffy feet and swollen ankles all the way up to her backside—once farm-strong skin, muscle and bone, now a travesty of weathered and atrophied naked flesh. Mari set the soapy cloth upon her mother’s left leg and moved it in an upward motion, cleansing the leak of excrement that stained her thigh and wondering how a just and good God could heap one more indignity upon a woman already so buried in grief?

  2 Pozzo Menzogna [b. 1247-d. 1311): Scholar, composer, actor, playwright and mentor of Dante Bocchino Alighieri. Born to an illiterate cobbler in the village of Cacasenno. At the age of twelve, Menzogna was sold by his father into servitude in the Court of Salvestro de’ Meducci. Young Menzogna had nimble fingers and a keen ear for music, learned to play the lute and mandolin, and by 1268 attained the position of Court composer—a post he held with distinction until his untimely death. Self-educated, Menzogna taught himself Latin, French, Greek and Spanish and became a prolific writer of plays and essays. He is universally recognized as the creator of dramaturgy. His great treatise on theatrical and narrative philosophy, Il Trattato Definitivo sul Dramma, was completed in 1301 and became the formative text upon which the Renaissance theater and modern novel were largely based. Tragically, during a visit to Bagni di Lucca with a troupe of thespians, Menzogna overindulged in the region’s renowned grappa while soaking in one the village’s famous hot springs. The combination of relaxing geothermal water and alcohol proved fatal, as Menzogna fell asleep and drowned.

  In which We Learn

  the Recipe for

  Melanzane con Pesto di Erbe

  The late-morning sun poured through the stained-glass window of the village’s medieval church and seeped through the tight weave of the confessional’s lattice. Inside the small wooden abode the light dripped a bluish hue upon the rather concerned countenance of a pudgy twelve-year-old altar boy named Bertolli. The boy was panting, overwrought with anxiousness, and squeaked a pathetic-sounding “Ay” as he laid his hand upon his heart. It had all happened so suddenly. Up until a few moments ago, it had been a pleasant morning, a morning in which Bertolli had been feeling especially proud of himself. He had been diligently attending to his morning chores and, more important, he had not committed a single act of mischief for three full days. In fact, since meeting the Good Padre some six months ago, Bertolli had begun to feel that his lifelong fascination with disobedience was waning. That was, at least, until the exotic trio came riding in and laid temptation in the palm of his hand.

  Inside the confessional, Bertolli knelt and removed a rather formal-looking letter from inside the fold of his simple cream-colored cassock. The boy’s pale and chubby hands trembled as he ran his fingers across the letter’s fine parchment and over the intricate indentations of its crimson wax seal. “Oh,” groaned Bertolli as he mulled over the events that had transpired only a moment earlier, “merda.”

  It all had started innocently enough. Bertolli had been busy sweeping the front steps for the imminent Sunday evening mass when he heard the clatter of hooves and looked up to see a Corriere di Vaticane, escorted by two Guardia Nobile di Meducci, gallop through the village’s open gate and halt their stallions before the church’s entranceway. Mio Dio, thought Bertolli, Meducci guards, a Vatican courier, here?

  “Ragazzo,” said the severe-looking courier with deep-set eyes and a turtle-like nose, which bent disturbingly to the right. “Come here.”

  “Eh? Me?” Bertolli pointed to himself, astonished that such an important person desired to communicate with him.

  “Yes, you, boy.”

  C
ertain he was in trouble for something he had done, Bertolli descended the church steps and approached the courier. As he neared, Bertolli found himself overwhelmed by the fierceness and regalia of the trio. Sitting upon his huge horse, the courier appeared majestic. He wore a fine red tunic tied around the waist with a sash of gold silk. His horse was so spectacularly muscled and well groomed that its deep auburn paint shimmered in the sunlight and caused Bertolli to squint. Though the village was the kind of place far more familiar to the mule, Bertolli had, of course, seen horses before, but not like this one.

  “This is a far-off little village, isn’t it?” said the courier.

  “I wouldn’t know, sir.”

  “Why is that, boy?”

  “I have never been much beyond the village walls, sir.”

  “Ah,” nodded the courier, seemingly impressed by the boy’s self-awareness, “I see. Well, you appear well fed in this little village, well fed, indeed. Perhaps there is no point in venturing out, perhaps none at all. But,” the courier lowered his voice as he leaned over toward Bertolli, the leather of his saddle squeaking against his trousers, “beyond these walls, boy, there are wonders and adventures beyond your wildest dreaming. There are bodies of water wider than a hundred days’ journey by ship, and sea creatures so awesome they eat boys like you by the dozen and shit forth your bones cleaned of every morsel of muscle and organ. There are mountains higher than a hundred days’ walking can crest, mountains lorded over by giant snow beasts whose fangs and nails are the size of daggers and whose thirst for blood—particularly young and virgin—is insatiable. And while you may be too young to appreciate this now, there are women—beguiling creatures of such beauty and mystery that in a fleeting look you will be smitten forever. They will steal your heart, take over your mind and tantalize your flesh to heights of pleasure your young brain can hardly fathom. Oh, yes, there are wonders and mysteries all across this broad, flat world. And one day, boy, when your balls grow hairy and your spirit craves to eat more from life than the home-grown grass, if you are so inclined, you will breach these village walls and make a great adventure of your life.”

  Bertolli was mesmerized and confused. The corriere spoke without a stitch of rhyme. Bertolli could only comprehend half of what the man said, but even that was enough to enthrall him.

  Having had enough of their comrade’s charade, one of the Meducci guards cleared his throat.

  The noise broke the magic and the courier sat upright in his saddle when something in the near-distance caught his eye. “Bless’d Virgin,” said the courier with a surprising softness as his vision beheld the statue of the Virgin that sat above the church’s entrance.

  “Faccia di stronzo,” said the Meducci guard who had just cleared his throat, “would you get on with it.”

  “Yes, yes,” said the courier dismissively. “You are an altar boy of this humble church?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Bertolli.

  “Good,” said the courier. “And has this church a priest?” “Yes, sir. Shall I fetch him?”

  “No need. You seem like a capable youth.” The courier removed a letter from his leather satchel. “Have you any idea what this is?”

  “No, sir,” said Bertolli.

  “’Tis an official papal decree, written and signed by His Holiness Pope Leon XI and His Eminence Cosimo di Pucci de’ Meducci the Third. It is of the utmost importance. The will of God Himself, conducted through the Holy Pope and honorable Meducci and set to parchment. Handed directly from His Holiness to yours truly, with the express command that I hand-deliver this decree to the padre of this little church and every like church throughout Tuscany. But since my men and I are ravaged by thirst and hunger and desirous of visiting the tavern, I will entrust final passage of this ordinance to you, altar boy. Do you understand me?”

  Bertolli was speechless. He could feel the energy building inside him, the devilish curiosity.

  “Ragazzo,” said the courier, snapping the altar boy back to attention. “Do you understand me?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good.” The courier motioned with the letter toward Bertolli, but as Bertolli reached up for the letter, the courier pulled it back. “Now, altar boy,” said the courier, “under no circumstances are you to open the letter. Do not let curious fingers chip the wax from its seal. Do not unfurl one crease of its fold. Do not even hold it to the light to make out its contents. Remember, from God’s will to Pope’s quill, from Pope’s charge to my duty, from my duty to your honor.” The courier then set the letter in Bertolli’s outstretched hand. “Now off you go, ragazzo, off you go.”

  Inside the confessional, Bertolli ran his nervous, chubby fingers over the fine papal letter and not-so-innocently flaked away at the elaborate wax seal. It was a perplexing time in his young life. His Confermazione was fast approaching and he was having great difficulty rationalizing his boyish instincts against his pending manhood. For reasons unbeknownst to him, many of the actions that had brought him so much joy, and he had given hardly a thought to, now brought him far less joy and provoked far more thought. Such contemplation was not pleasant and the idea of giving up the antics that had defined his youth was not easy for him.

  Indeed, tormenting the old padre had been the highlight and focus of his last four years. Evidence of his former antics and triumphs was all about him. Even inside the confessional, a deep inhale through the nostrils could still catch the slight aroma of the rotten eggs Bertolli had hidden two years back. It had taken the old padre four vexing months, in which he’d thought a demon had inhabited the sacred domain, before he finally discovered the source of the fetid sulfuric odor.

  Oh, but times had changed, and much to Bertolli’s current consternation, the new Good Padre, as he was commonly called, existed so far beyond Bertolli’s limited understanding of the world that the poor boy’s mind was in crisis. Even his altar boy responsibilities, which had always been a perfunctory duty forced upon him by his grandmother, were now a service he secretly relished. He was spending so much time at the church that his grandmother had come to suspect he’d discovered a key to the wine cellar and was up to no good.

  After all, pondered Bertolli, who was this new Good Padre? He’d simply arrived in town the very day after the old padre died. But how? Bertolli wondered. He knew everything that went on at the church, and no one to his knowledge had notified the diocese in Florence that the village was in need of a new priest—and so quickly. As far as Bertolli could recall, in the four years he’d been an altar boy, no one informed the diocese about anything, ever. But there he was, at the door of the church, so Bertolli did what everyone else in the village did: he let him in, fearfully assuming that the Holy See had a far greater vision than anyone had previously imagined.

  The timing of the new priest’s arrival was just one of the many mysteries that perplexed Bertolli. The man was, without a doubt, the most confounding person Bertolli had ever laid eyes upon; a man whose voice seemed to echo from Bertolli’s bowels to his brain like a sacred hymn chanted by a hundred monks; who spoke in metaphors that only made sense after a day’s pondering; who cooked meals for him with flavors well beyond anything his own grandmother ever prepared; who was as big as a water buffalo, yet gentle as a ewe; and whose eyes glowed with a magnanimous joy that transfixed the boy.

  But more than anything, Bertolli’s mind was gripped by the utter incomprehensibility of the Good Padre’s appearance. It was possible to describe the size of the Good Padre’s shoulders, the thickness of his chest, the bellow of his voice; however, his complexion seemed to defy thought itself. Every time Bertolli was in the presence of the Good Padre, his brain would flutter with a vague, foggy notion that the Good Padre was as dark and shiny as a profoundly purple eggplant 3. But the thought would not stay still and the more Bertolli tried to comprehend it, the thought would slip and twist and become even more incomprehensible. It was like trying to draw water with a sieve. Every time Bertolli attempted to confirm such a thought out loud, either to
himself or another, the thought would simply drain from his mind and the words evaporate from his tongue.

  The courier’s charge now clanged like an Easter morning church bell in the belfry of Bertolli’s mind. He was trying to change, he was trying to be good, but old habits, even for young altar boys, were not so easily undone. The parchment of the letter was so fine, the wax seal so intricate. He felt himself growing intoxicated on the faint scent of rotten eggs. His thumbnail flaked away a small fleck of wax. It was too much, all the unsettled questions spinning about his brain. Might the letter hold some insight about the Good Padre? Might it?

  Meanwhile, in the church’s garden, kneeling on the slim strip of upturned earth between the rows of zucchini on his left and eggplants on his right, the Good Padre contemplated which of several splendidly ripe eggplants he should pluck for the evening’s supper. The other day a new idea for eggplant preparation had come to him and he was eager to try it out. The recipe, as he imagined it, would begin with eggplant, cut width-wise into finger-thick slices. Next, the Good Padre planned to dip the slices into egg batter and then dredge them in chestnut flour with coarsely crushed walnuts, pignoli, sea salt and red pepper flakes. Filling a skillet half-knuckle deep with olive oil, he would then fry the slices until their outsides were golden and their innards soft. Next, the Good Padre planned to lay slices of a particularly pungent, semi-firm cow’s-milk cheese upon the fried eggplant pieces. Finally, he would set the skillet in an oven to soften the cheese and bake the eggplant.

  To dress the eggplant slices, the Good Padre conceived of a new version of pesto. He would still use olive oil, salt, pepper, pignoli and a little squeeze of lemon, but diverging from the recipe made popular in Genoa, he would complement basil with an equal amount of fresh mint and even a few sage leaves. Overall, he imagined the fried eggplant meat, nutty coating and ripe cheese would blossom nicely under the sage and mint pesto’s zest.